Panel III: Wisdom


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In 1890, William James published The Principles of Psychology and made famous the metaphor of a stream to describe the seamless nature of conscious experience. James was intrigued by this quality of mind but questioned it and wondered whether consciousness only seems "continuous to itself by an illusion analogous to that of the zoetrope?" Similarly, Buddhist philosophers recognize the continuity of mind to be like a river but interrogate the illusion of an immutable "self."

According to the Consequence (prasangika) school of thought, mind and reality are devoid (sunyata) of inherent existence because they are relative. Buddhologist Robert A. F. Thurman refers to this as Nagarjuna's "Royal Reason of Relativity," and on this panel argues that it provides an innovative way of approaching personal identity and the so called "explanatory gap" in consciousness studies.

Panelists include: physicist Piet Hut, philosopher W. Teed Rockwell, and Sanskritist Gary Tubb

Target Essay: Robert A.F. Thurman
Professor of Buddhism, Columbia University


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Robert A.F. Thurman is the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, President of Tibet House North America (a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization), and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies (a non-profit affiliated with the Center for Buddhist Studies at Columbia University and dedicated to the publication of translations of important texts from the Tibetan Tanjur).

Professor Thurman is the translator of many Buddhist philosophical treatises and sutras, and the author of numerous books including the national bestseller, Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness; Anger (the fifth book from a series on the "seven deadly sins"); and most recently, The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism.

Thurman's other writings and lectures have examined Asian history (particularly the history of the monastic institution in the Asian civilization) and critical philosophy, with a focus on the dialogue between the material and inner sciences of the world's religious traditions. In 1997, Time magazine chose Robert Thurman as one of its twenty-five most influential Americans.
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Response: W. Teed Rockwell
Professor of Philosophy, Sonoma State University


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Teed Rockwell began his philosophical studies with a strong interest in Continental philosophy, especially Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Hegel. He now studies how philosophical presuppositions about mind and reality affect the practices of scientific researchers, especially in biology, psychology and the cognitive sciences. Much to his own surprise, he has become a philosopher of science in the Anglo-American Analytic tradition. He sees the American pragmatists, especially John Dewey, as the root that connects these two allegedly conflicting traditions.

Teed has had articles published in Behavior and Philosophy, Philosophical Psychology, Minds and Machines, The Journal of Consciousness Studies, The Journal of the John Dewey Society, and in the Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind. He has presented papers at meetings of the American Philosophical Association, The Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and the Southern Society of Philosophy and Psychology, among others. His book Neither Brain nor Ghost (MIT Press, 2005) rejects both dualism and the mind/brain identity theory, arguing that the mind is a “behavioral field” that fluctuates within the brain/body/world nexus. Teed is in the philosophy department at Sonoma State University.
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Response: Gary Tubb
Professor of Indic Studies, Columbia University


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Gary Tubb has studied Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Harvard University and in India, and has taught at Harvard, Brown, Vassar, and Columbia. He offers courses on Sanskrit language and literature and on the literary, religious, and philosophical traditions of India. In his research, he is especially interested in Sanskrit literary theory and related scholastic traditions. He has written primarily on Sanskrit poetry and poetics.
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Response: Piet Hut
Physicist, Institute for Advanced Study


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Piet Hut is currently a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. His main research interest concerns investigations of the structure of the world from different points of view. His work as an astrophysicist aims at increasing our understanding of the physical world on the largest scales in time and space by studying the history of the Universe. Interdisciplinary collaborations have allowed him to branch out from astrophysics per se to physics in general, as well as to geology and paleontology, where he has found each discipline to rely on remarkably different views of the material world. In addition, his research in computer science showed yet other views of the world when seen in the light of structures of information. Over the last several years he has attempted to summarize what he has learned in these various areas through some journeys into natural philosophy.
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Group Discussion
Panel III: Wisdom


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